If you want AC and a radio you’re looking at about 12k EUR, which definitely isn’t terrible. It’s a Renault subsidiary and you see a fair amount of them driving around.
So yeah, it’s not like offering an affordable bare-bone car isn’t possible in mature markets, it’s more likely that Americans just don’t have an appetite for them.
The affordable car is definitely being tested though. Renault discontinued the Twingo last year, which was their smallest car. Audi discontinued the A1, claiming there’s just no money to be made in their lowest segment.
It’s looking pretty bleak for the utilitarians among us, as electrification happens and safety features such as lane assist and emergency stop systems become mandatory, base prices will consistently be higher. You can only drive down the price of components so much.
The base model Dacia Duster doesn't come with height adjustment on the driver's seat or with a glovebox light, you need to upgrade to the Comfort package for those. It does interestingly come with a radio these days, back in the day that used to require one of the upgrade packages.
It’s has a manual transmission and an inline 4-cylinder with very low output compared to most vehicles. Paradoxically, that combination makes it fun to drive.
It also holds its value very well. I’ve owned it for twelve of the 23 years of its life so far, and I could sell it today for more than I paid for it. At the same time, it’s extremely cheap to fix, because the design hasn’t changed often over the years and the powertrain is shared between many popular vehicles of its time.
My wife’s vehicle has far more “creature comforts”. She drives a 2015 Kia Sorento that we bought new. We’re considering upgrading hers to a new Kia Telluride in the near future, especially considering recent trends in used car prices.
There’s definitely still a place out there for mechanically simple vehicles. It’s a shame that the new Jeep Wranglers - say, the JK and newer - have gotten so much larger, more complex, and expensive to maintain.
If I had my druthers, I’d be driving something like a modern Kubelwagen, VW Thing, or perhaps something with a bit more cargo space like a Pinzgauer. It’s a shame no one seems interested in making them.
I will not part with my MK6, manual 6 speed, 2L turbo! Notes: There are younger folks now that won't bother with manual. 3G telemetry just expired (yay). It's fun. And decent MPG.
I found a 2012 M/T GTI being sold in Southern California and literally hopped on the next flight once I got confirmation that they’d sell it to me. I bought at asking ($6500, a steal just months later) and drove it back to Sacramento.
I never thought I’d be that kind of person to take a one-way flight to buy a car, but that MK6 GTI has changed me. It’s one of the few “modern” vehicles that is easy to do work on yourself. The chassis was designed to hold the larger 2.5L, 5-cylinder engine in the Golf so the smaller 2.0L Turbo left enough room to get in there and perform repairs/service without taking body panels off (cough cough BMW). Armed with a VCDS and a 10mm, I can diagnose and fix most minor things.
Super fun, easy to self service, manual transmission, not letting this go.
The Fit started selling really well around the time of the 08 crash (and fuel more than doubled in price that decade):
https://www.autoblog.com/2008/06/23/honda-boosting-fit-produ...
> Like most other manufacturers doing business in the U.S., Honda has been caught by surprise by the sudden shift in demand to smaller cars.
Sort of similar to Ford discontinuing the Focus despite it selling fairly well. It was a lot of effort for a narrow profit margin so they shifted into more profitable vehicles. A shame because the Focus and the Fit were both reasonable, affordable choices.
We desperately need sub-20k electric cars and they just don't exist.
I've got a cheap $0 lane assist and emergency stop system called "paying attention and not tailgating" that came stock in my 2003 Ford Ranger. I've been using it consistently for 35 years now on different makes and models of vehicles and it hasn't failed once.
The roads are a highly regulated public space where safe, smooth motion depends on everyone working together, and where one little error can throw it into chaos. Everyone will mess up if they live long enough. You can make some philosophical argument against mandatory safety features if you like, but I hate driving as it is and welcome any feature that reduces the odds or severity of the inevitable results of the limits of human perception and reaction time.
There are plenty of people who absolutely are not skilled at driving. They never will be. But they have to own a car to live in our society - thus, here we are.
People still don't know how to use them.
I don't think "road design" is an issue. People in Europe drive less in general, risk groups (teenagers and elderly) drive significantly less often, there are less people who need a car to get home after a night out, higher BAC levels (0.08% vs 0.05% or less in EU), etc.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...
None of this will change the fact that, you, as the driver bear primary responsibility for your own safety, and that of your passengers, when in control of a vehicle. Driver aids are helpful but are not a substitute for attentive and defensive driving.
I have very severe doubts this is what is happening since we're just becoming more distracted and the roads are becoming more lethal.
Lane assist and braking assist just allow you to be more distracted without immediately getting punished by it, normalizing the distracted behavior.
You're the next iteration of the person complaining about anti-lock breaks because you can just learn to drive better on ice.
I do not think it is that simple. I think regulations also restrict how simple a car can be. Top of my head, breaks, lights, light colors, emissions, transmission (go figure), fuel storage, fueling features, and so on. All these add to the cost.
No one wants to drive a car that has no or minimal creature comforts.
That's a shame. I'm driving A1 2020 model, and it really is the perfect little car even in the most basic of trims.
What would be nice though is a car that doesn't get redesigned every few years. If I know that redesigns will only happen every 10 years, then that means cheap parts will be abundant and maintaining the car will be much cheaper.
One reason I don't see mentioned here is the perverse incentives to manufacturers to make larger cars due to CO2 emissions regulations differing depending on the size of the car. So instead of making more efficient engines to hit the targets (no doubt the intent of the regulations), they just stop making small cars.
However, the intent was to say they (politicians, society) did something about CO2 emissions without actually giving up anything. Which was accomplished.
Yaris worked well in general. I'm not surprised it's popular with college kids. It was pretty bothersome, though, how at the lowest trim level they even disabled things like cruise control. I'm three times older than any college kid and it made my ankle ache on long drives.
I'm not even 100% sure how they work...
At the same time here in New Zealand long journeys are 99% on two lane roads, with lots of corners and hills. Not sure how useful cruise control is for that.
You're probably getting more than 20% in reliability/maintenance.
Deals exist on unwanted vehicles for sure. The iA always sold cheaper than the actual Toyota Yaris in my experience despite being a far superior car.
Edit: my first truck (1986 Toyota) was $6k. Manual everything and didn't even come with a radio. Most of the stuff was fixable at home (if you're handy). Didn't even have EFI. I feel like Honda used to have some of these simpler models - not just cause it was the 70/80s but also because that was a longer lasting/simpler product.
We've replaced longevity with bells/whistles as the key-feature.
Similar features may be available in an SUV or sedan but I've never seen one; would probably be a special order or maybe only available to fleet purchasers.
I haven't bought a brand new car in over 20 years so I don't know if you can still get cars like this. Rear cameras are now mandatory, so all new cars will have a screen. And if they have a screen anyway, adding more features to it is likely to happen.
> Rear cameras are now mandatory, so all new cars will have a screen.
Nah, the cheap ones just put a tiny little screen in the rear view camera. Nice because it requires no other changes to the dash, and is universal across models.
So, an automaker can either include neither of those two features (and neither of us will want that car), both of them (which makes it more expensive, and if you adopt the policy of "take the union of all of the bare minimums" then you have a normal car), or just a subset. You lose every way.
It's philosophy pretending to be engineering. Real engineer requires deep analysis, not just assuming that simple is more reliable.
In Europe we have Dacia which is exactly that.
*will still get a Dacia for necessity, though.
For my needs thats enough. The trick is to never buy a better car, so you don't get used to the more comfortable features. :)
https://www.mitsubishicars.com/cars-and-suvs/mirage
One problem with this class of cars is that they do not compete favorably with used cars.
In reality someone shopping for a car on a budget is just going to buy a few years used instead of cutting out all the accessories in an attempt to scrimp. So the unfortunate truth is that there is no market and no profitability for a purposefully minimal car.
The closest you will find are rental market and commercial fleet vehicles like basic sedans (Chevy Malibu), pickup trucks, and vans where the automakers know there is such high demand and guaranteed income that they don't need to pad them with extra frills.
No, it's because people who buy new cars don't want this.
Its redeeming qualities are light weight and responsive handling, to feel like driving a nimble hatchback rather than a lumbering SUV, while having the raised cockpit, visibility, and most of the cargo space of an SUV. Lack of AWD is a feature; I don't do any towing or driving on snow or dirt to need it; FWD is lighter and cheaper and more efficient.
People have preferences that aren't the same as yours, and insulting them isn't necessary. Crossovers are very practical and people buy them for plenty of good reasons.
I also have been shopping for a new car and the selection out there is miserable what with all the stupid option games, horrible butt-ugly design, and everyone insisting that cars need more microchips than CERN for whatever reason. When I find something interesting I always run into some gotcha that turns me off.
My latest disappointment was Ford's bait and switch manual transmission Bronco (I love driving manuals)- it's only available paired with the anemic turbo I4 instead of the more powerful V6. No one is buying a 5000 pound vehicle with an I4 in it. I read an article which stated that a ford rep explained this is because manuals are unpopular so they didn't pair it with the more powerful engine option - the engine option that people like me who spec manuals want to order. Of course the manual wont sell if its paired with garbage you idiots.
Sadly a lot of the other stuff is less awesome.
Nothing sticks out, they are completely smooth aerodynamically.
(I do think the aero model 3 wheels may be functional but are not attractive)
Inside the car, I think tesla's minimalism has gone too far.
The telsa model 3 without a dashboard in front of the driver is cheap, not minimal. They also reduced the stalks and overloaded the controls.
Then the recent model S/X changes went further to outright dangerous. There are no stalks at all on the steering column, and turn signals, horn and high beams are touch buttons in the middle of steering wheel. When you move, the car guesses which direction you want to go, there is no gearshift stalk. There are gearshift buttons at the bottom of the console, but no dedicated buttons for other critical functions like defrost. sigh.
It won’t help you on the minimal features and replaceable radio though.
In general, if you want the most basic, low-opex car you can find, just look at what rental car companies are buying (though rental companies have been desperate for anything, so this currently doesn't apply.)
Regulations and fuel economy standards absolutely influence design. The reason most euro cars/SUVs have a sloping hood (compared to the "RAWR I AM AGGRESSIVE" square front on most American SUVs) is to meet pedestrian Euro-NCAP standards. High door sills are to provide better side impact protection, smaller windows are to lower heat/AC load for fuel economy.
"All cars" are not "looking completely ridiculous." He cites some of the most infamously ugly cars (Toyota Camry and Prius) while ignoring, oh, the entire rest of the market. There are loads of conservatively styled cars out there. Toyota intentionally dramatically changes their styling almost every year because underneath those changing body panels and tail/head lights is the stuff that's actually expensive to change. They're intentionally garish because they want the design to look exciting now, and like aged dogshit in 3 years. They also want to push their more conservative buyers into Lexuses.
Lots of decent looking cars out there.
VW's current "narrow line" design language looks like ass, but go back one or two model years and I think they're pretty fantastically well-styled cars.
The Audi A6 hasn't been an ugly looking car in at least ten years. Current model: https://www.topgear.com/sites/default/files/cars-car/image/2...
Want something more "fashion forward"? Volvo's S90 is a work of art inside and out: https://www.media.volvocars.com/image/low/171020/2_2/1
If you want a sporty sedan that looks like sex on wheels and have a big wallet, the Alfa Giulia: https://media.ed.edmunds-media.com/alfa-romeo/giulia/2022/oe...
Want something a bit more conservative but sporty looking? BMW 3 series https://media.ed.edmunds-media.com/bmw/3-series/2021/oem/202...
I don't get what the author is on about with the current F150. It feels like Ford is really in stride; usually they're a shitshow of fugly, awkward curves and proportions, but they seem to be making designs that not only look good in the present, but are holding up longer.
I disagree, and most people living when those cars were new would, I suspect, disagree. I would guess this is either a nostalgia-driven (positive for older designs) or overexposure-driven (negative for newer common designs) aesthetic preference.
Pretty much. They preclude that car from actually being cheap enough that people would buy it over a nicer used car and as the new car market skews higher and higher end the used car market skews likewise making the competition stiffer.
>about all new cars looking completely ridiculous.
The front body work is bounded by pedestrian safety requirements in the EU and aerodynamics. The rooflines and beltlines are bounded by US safety requirements. It's no surprise that the designs all converge.
Airbags, active suspension systems, ABS, backup cameras, etc all increase the cost of cars. Though I dont know how much of that is tied to increasing price of used cars - that seems to have more to do with Cash for Clunkers taking a huge amount of used cars out of the used car market, while it put a bunch of people in new cars, it also skewed the pricing for used cars higher - it took an entire generation of used cars out of the market - which continues to effect pricing today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_stability_control#T...
Unfortunately, it doesn't look like Suzuki sell cars in the US?
After that happened I drove a Toyota Corolla hybrid with a CVT and it was awesome. High mileage, tranquil, no gaps in acceleration. The only downside was that it is smaller than a Passat (GTE).
I think for a long time CVT's suffered from a poor reputation due to the reliability of those 1970'ies DAF cars.